Use Of The Child Pugh Score In Liver Disease

The Child-Pugh scoring system (also known as the Child-Pugh-Turcotte score) was designed to predict mortality in cirrhosis patients. Originally conceptualized by Child and Turcotte in 1964 to guide the selection of patients who would benefit from elective surgery for portal decompression, it broke down patients into three categories: A - good hepatic function, B - moderately impaired hepatic function, and C - advanced hepatic dysfunction. Their original scoring system used five clinical and laboratory criteria to categorize patients: serum bilirubin, serum albumin, ascites, neurological disorder, and clinical nutrition status. The scoring system was modified later by Pugh et al., substituting prothrombin time for clinical nutrition status. Additionally, they introduced variable points for each criterion based on increasing severity :